With hopes and aspirations of being a good film director, producer, writer and story-teller I have taken a hard shot at being objective, yet critical of some of the pieces that I view.
Up until this time I have been lazy, talking out my thoughts while brushing my teeth and getting to those hard spots on the back during the daily shower, but 135 minutes can change things in a hurry.
Life is truly art. Everything we do is art in motion. Ever notice how you walk? How you talk? How you smile? Every (expletive omitted, lol) thing we do is simply art in motion. Ever wonder why certain friends, relatives, people appeal to us more than others? Simply because they are better art than the others, lol!! And as humans we inherently like seeing beautiful things, especially those with a well choreographed, natural "swagger", for lack of a better word, about them.
I can go down that route further delving into my theories about us being characters of a play of immense proportions with each of us here to fulfill a certain role, but this one isn't about that.
This one is about a 2 hour 15 minute film that will leave you turned on, turned off, then bored, then really bored, then challenging your intelligence and then finally making you wonder whether there was some deeper message that you simply didn't get. But then after much pondering you realize it was a comedy because the biggest joke was on you, the viewer, who can never get back that wasted time. How sad humor can be.
But let's stay fair and objective. Focus Shobhit, focus. So there is a movie out of Bollywood called Naach. It stars Abhishek Bachchan, Antara Mali, and Ritesh Deshmukh. The premise is simple. Struggling actor who wants to be a success at any cost, struggling dance choreographer who wants to stick to her ideals and values and wants to make it big only based on her talents (never mind that her talents are choreographing dancing best suited for some bachelor party) and then there is naive, goodly director who finally spots this "talent". The twists are that struggling actor and dance choreographer had struggled together and had fallen in love with each other, until they went their separate ways, with actor becoming big and well the other still struggling to pay her monthly rent. Then naive director comes into the film and makes "moralistic" dance choreographer a success, also falls in love with her and is too dufus to tell her. Now successful, the actor realizes all the wealth, fame and fortune are nothing since he is really in love with our dancer. One tearful monologue later she is convinced that the "man" she fell in love with is back and she spurns the poor good guy director to go back to her original love.
I will pause while you go to puke, take some Panadol/ Tylenol or have already clicked on reply to send me a hate mail for giving you a massive headache. Well spare a thought I had to sit through the debacle.
Alright I am going to be fair.
The movie was a treat to watch if you are really, really into dancing. But wait you have to be into a certain kind of dancing. More sensual than artistic I would say and that mildly was disturbing since the impression given is that this kind of dancing is "different" and "straight from the heart/ soul". The film did have a genuine artsy feel to it. Apart from about 50 minutes of songs and 37 minutes of dialogue-less scenes the general cinematography did make you feel as if you were at the periphery of a movie set. (The aforementioned times worked in my favor since I was able to hit the fwd on my DVD and not miss anything while progressing along).
The scarcity of too many characters makes the viewer focus on our 3 main characters and that worked in favor of the flick. The depiction of some of the dirt and some of the flooziness that pervades the film industry was also well shown. I will give the fact that the dialogue exchanges were very elementary and simple to the fact that the characters weren't very educated and hence their vocabulary was limited. If that was the reason the director kept the exchanges such then he did well. If it was because he had a really bad script-writer then I hope this email reaches him and he ahem ahem gets a new one, hint hint.
Right now onto the good stuff.
First of all making a bad piece of work and then deglamorising it as if it was supposed to be ordinary in my opinion isn't art! Taking a story of a movie you yourself made about 8 years ago (Rangeela, which was a masterpiece might I add) and then playing musical chairs with the characters isn't really original either. Indian movies surprisingly still continue to challenge, somewhat mock the intelligence of the viewer and that is also not fair. I think one reason I was not pleased was simply because I at no point during the movie felt any activity in my brain. Well except to use my finger to press and unpress the fwd button on the remote.
Naach which means "dance" in English did have a lot of "naach-ing" in it but they were basically Power Yoga moves done a bit more intensely and with an air of sultriness about them. I like listening to stories, long ones too, and I think if you take 135 minutes to tell me something that could have been told in 10 minutes then that's a short-coming in either the narrative or the story itself.
Naach leaves nothing to mystery, nothing to think about and in reality nothing much to write about either, but I guess this is one way to save some other people's time. Anyone could have pulled of the male roles with ease, but giving credit where it is due, Antara Mali was great as a dancer and as the somewhat arrogant, moralistic, yet non-intellectual choreographer. She definitely has body suited for the role.
So in summary, if it isn't clear yet, I would stay far from this movie unless:
- you want to use it as a "colorful" Yoga video
- you really want to critique my opinions and prove me wrong
- you want to induce vomiting- you want to bore someone to sleep
- you want to choreograph a dance, in that sense you will get some nice moves for sure
My big tiffs with the flick were:
- at no point was I made to think
- the dialogues were ordinary
- the lack of depth of the characters was masked by a "naach" every so many minutes
Interestingly I saw Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and I still haven't figured that one out, so help me if you can. More on that one soon, once I can digest it, lol.
Remember to send comments and be brutally honest, I love constructive criticism.
Regards,
Shobhit
Up until this time I have been lazy, talking out my thoughts while brushing my teeth and getting to those hard spots on the back during the daily shower, but 135 minutes can change things in a hurry.
Life is truly art. Everything we do is art in motion. Ever notice how you walk? How you talk? How you smile? Every (expletive omitted, lol) thing we do is simply art in motion. Ever wonder why certain friends, relatives, people appeal to us more than others? Simply because they are better art than the others, lol!! And as humans we inherently like seeing beautiful things, especially those with a well choreographed, natural "swagger", for lack of a better word, about them.
I can go down that route further delving into my theories about us being characters of a play of immense proportions with each of us here to fulfill a certain role, but this one isn't about that.
This one is about a 2 hour 15 minute film that will leave you turned on, turned off, then bored, then really bored, then challenging your intelligence and then finally making you wonder whether there was some deeper message that you simply didn't get. But then after much pondering you realize it was a comedy because the biggest joke was on you, the viewer, who can never get back that wasted time. How sad humor can be.
But let's stay fair and objective. Focus Shobhit, focus. So there is a movie out of Bollywood called Naach. It stars Abhishek Bachchan, Antara Mali, and Ritesh Deshmukh. The premise is simple. Struggling actor who wants to be a success at any cost, struggling dance choreographer who wants to stick to her ideals and values and wants to make it big only based on her talents (never mind that her talents are choreographing dancing best suited for some bachelor party) and then there is naive, goodly director who finally spots this "talent". The twists are that struggling actor and dance choreographer had struggled together and had fallen in love with each other, until they went their separate ways, with actor becoming big and well the other still struggling to pay her monthly rent. Then naive director comes into the film and makes "moralistic" dance choreographer a success, also falls in love with her and is too dufus to tell her. Now successful, the actor realizes all the wealth, fame and fortune are nothing since he is really in love with our dancer. One tearful monologue later she is convinced that the "man" she fell in love with is back and she spurns the poor good guy director to go back to her original love.
I will pause while you go to puke, take some Panadol/ Tylenol or have already clicked on reply to send me a hate mail for giving you a massive headache. Well spare a thought I had to sit through the debacle.
Alright I am going to be fair.
The movie was a treat to watch if you are really, really into dancing. But wait you have to be into a certain kind of dancing. More sensual than artistic I would say and that mildly was disturbing since the impression given is that this kind of dancing is "different" and "straight from the heart/ soul". The film did have a genuine artsy feel to it. Apart from about 50 minutes of songs and 37 minutes of dialogue-less scenes the general cinematography did make you feel as if you were at the periphery of a movie set. (The aforementioned times worked in my favor since I was able to hit the fwd on my DVD and not miss anything while progressing along).
The scarcity of too many characters makes the viewer focus on our 3 main characters and that worked in favor of the flick. The depiction of some of the dirt and some of the flooziness that pervades the film industry was also well shown. I will give the fact that the dialogue exchanges were very elementary and simple to the fact that the characters weren't very educated and hence their vocabulary was limited. If that was the reason the director kept the exchanges such then he did well. If it was because he had a really bad script-writer then I hope this email reaches him and he ahem ahem gets a new one, hint hint.
Right now onto the good stuff.
First of all making a bad piece of work and then deglamorising it as if it was supposed to be ordinary in my opinion isn't art! Taking a story of a movie you yourself made about 8 years ago (Rangeela, which was a masterpiece might I add) and then playing musical chairs with the characters isn't really original either. Indian movies surprisingly still continue to challenge, somewhat mock the intelligence of the viewer and that is also not fair. I think one reason I was not pleased was simply because I at no point during the movie felt any activity in my brain. Well except to use my finger to press and unpress the fwd button on the remote.
Naach which means "dance" in English did have a lot of "naach-ing" in it but they were basically Power Yoga moves done a bit more intensely and with an air of sultriness about them. I like listening to stories, long ones too, and I think if you take 135 minutes to tell me something that could have been told in 10 minutes then that's a short-coming in either the narrative or the story itself.
Naach leaves nothing to mystery, nothing to think about and in reality nothing much to write about either, but I guess this is one way to save some other people's time. Anyone could have pulled of the male roles with ease, but giving credit where it is due, Antara Mali was great as a dancer and as the somewhat arrogant, moralistic, yet non-intellectual choreographer. She definitely has body suited for the role.
So in summary, if it isn't clear yet, I would stay far from this movie unless:
- you want to use it as a "colorful" Yoga video
- you really want to critique my opinions and prove me wrong
- you want to induce vomiting- you want to bore someone to sleep
- you want to choreograph a dance, in that sense you will get some nice moves for sure
My big tiffs with the flick were:
- at no point was I made to think
- the dialogues were ordinary
- the lack of depth of the characters was masked by a "naach" every so many minutes
Interestingly I saw Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and I still haven't figured that one out, so help me if you can. More on that one soon, once I can digest it, lol.
Remember to send comments and be brutally honest, I love constructive criticism.
Regards,
Shobhit
posted by SIAII at 8:50 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home